Around the age of twelve, Frederick Douglass was sold from a plantation in the countryside to a family in the city of Baltimore. His new mistress set out to teach him to read, and got through the alphabet, until her husband made her stop. “[I]f you teach that nigger . . . how to read,” […]
Corrigan’s Editorial Note: Emilee Rosell took her very first (English Composition II) and very last (World Literature) college classes with me as her professor. She’s now graduated with a BA in English. In this reflection essay, she looks back on what she learned in that last class, and throughout college. I cannot say how inspired and encouraged I […]
My friend and former student Danielle Bonilla asked me for my take on “white privilege.” This phrase, which Peggy McIntosh famously unpacked in her 1989 essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” has received a lot of attention lately, positive and negative. In this post, with Danielle’s permission, here are her questions and my responses. What is your perspective on white privilege? “White privilege” is […]
“ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” —James Baldwin #Racism – When your society divides people into “races” based on arbitrary factors like skin color or ancestry and ascribes different worth to the different groups #Prejudice – When you have negative thoughts or feelings toward people of another race or ethnicity […]
Corrigan’s Editorial Note: In U.S. Literature in Spring 2015, Raeanne Watkins created the following images in response to John Okada’s No-No Boy and John Steinbeck’s The Pearl. Okada describes experiences of Japanese Americans after the WWII internment, while Steinbeck offers a parable, set in Mexico, about poverty and wealth. I find Ms. Watkins’ images striking on their […]
A review of scholarship. by Paul T. Corrigan 1. Introduction In late modernity and postmodernity, many aspects of traditional religion have become intellectually and morally untenable. Among the most pressing of these are the patriarchy, homophobia, and antisciencism that so often come with traditional religion. At the same time, however, many contemporary writers, religious and nonreligious, […]
Many people do not realize that Jesus was quoting directly from the Book of Leviticus when he said to love one’s neighbors as oneself. This context lends an important layer of meaning to his words. Often his saying is reduced to an encouragement to “be nice” to others. While not a bad admonish as far as it goes, that interpretation […]
William Bartram—the naturalist who effectively missed the American Revolution because from 1774-1777 he left his home in Pennsylvania and traveled through the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida—had a vast knowledge of ecology, including plants, animals, soil, landforms, and weather, which he demonstrates in his book on that expedition, commonly known simply as his Travels. If the glossary in the Library of […]
Corrigan Literary Review 